Best Open source Flash players for linux.

Forum: Linux and Free Software
Topic: Best Open source Flash players for linux.
started by: Zucca

Posted by Zucca on Oct. 11 2006,16:28

(Also with 'player' I mean plugin for web browser.)I'm getting really frustrated to Adobe's policies. We do need a flash player that can be inluded in linux distributions.Wikipedia says:

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Since Flash files do not depend on a truly open standard such as SVG, this reduces the incentive for non-commercial software to support the format, although there are several third party tools which use and generate the SWF file format and a large and vibrant open source community. Apparently, the Flash Player cannot ship as part of a pure open source, or completely free operating system, as its distribution is bound to the Macromedia Licensing Program and subject to approval.

But afaik there's not any good (enough support for new flash versions) open source (or just only free?) flash players around.Anyways. I think thoise are usable in most cases. Youtube and Google Video service playback would be great, but possible with those... Dunno.

Any of you have any experience and thoughts about those alternative players?Please, list also URLs so we can test those players.

Posted by Zucca on Oct. 13 2006,05:30

Ok. There's at least Gnash:

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Flash Support:--------------

Many of the Flash movies that I come across play fine in Gnash. Manyothers do not. In particular, Flash movies that are used for browsernavigation do not cause the browser to navigate yet. Producing sounddoes not generally work yet.

Gnash supports the majority of Flash opcodes up to SWF version 7, anda wide sampling of ActionScript classes for SWF version 7. All the coreones are implemented, and many of the newer ones work, but may be missingsome of their methods. All unimplemented opcodes and ActionScript classesand methods print a warning when using -v with gnash or gprocessor. Usinggprocessor -v is a quick way to see why a movie isn't playing correctly.

There is currently no FLV video, only minimal AMF data support,and no loading of external jpegs. Sound is currently non-functional.

Plugin: -------

The plugin correctly installs itself into Mozilla, Firefox, or Konqueror.It can play some Flash files in cooperation with the browser. Itshould work with any browser that supports the newer version ofMozilla's NSPR API and plugin SDK. This does not work with the olderbrowsers like Firefox 1.0.x, but works find with any Firefox 1.5 ornewer browser. The older browsers fail to initialize the plugin, soyou only get a blank screen.

Some web pages have Internet Explorer-specific Javascript that failin Firefox, which prevents the plugin from being loaded. In these casesI "view source" and then use wget to grab the movie for testing.

By default, the configure script looks for the GtkGl extension, and ifthat can't be found, it defaults to using SDL. The plugin works byusing the standalone player, so which ever graphics library Gnashuses, it's the same as the standalone player.

The GTK version has full event handling, and supports a right-clickmouse menu to control the movie. The SDL version has no eventhandling, which means mouse clicks and keys pressed get ignored. Alsothe windows don't resize, and occasionally they overrun thweirbiundaries. The GTK version requires GtkGlExt, and defaults to SDL ifGtkGlExt is not installed, or if --disable-glext is passed to configure.

All Flash movies are downloaded in full to /tmp, and then played from there.Gnash is not yet able to play a Flash file "as it arrives" over thenetwork. Adding the ability to handle input streams is on the TODO list.

Configure with --with-plugindir= to set the directory that "makeinstall" will install the plugin in. By default it will be installedin the users .mozilla/plugins or .firefox/plugins directory.

But as you noticed, it lacks many features.

Anyone know any better player?

Posted by Zucca on Oct. 13 2006,05:46

There's also < GPL Flash >..But It lacks many features as well:

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FEATURES--------

Limitations : - The plugin and the player use XShm extensions, so remote display is not possible. - No Flash 4 features (but no crash on Flash 4 files).